


The Love That Dares Not Speak

by ravendiana



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Nonverbal Communication, Other, celestial union, the Full Milton
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:01:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21802588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravendiana/pseuds/ravendiana
Summary: Some things are too big for mere words31 Days of Ineffables Day 7 Silent Night
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 30





	The Love That Dares Not Speak

It is really no mystery that Aziraphale found himself in the community of those whose love was condemned and secret. How much more forbidden by Heaven was his own love than theirs was forbidden by men, who thought they did Heaven's will? They were condemned for loving like themselves, he for loving one too different. Yet that longing for what was forbidden was a point of unity. And he had always been at home in their community.

He learned from them the silent ways of speaking. A lexicon of looks and subtle gestures. An ever changing array of signs; flowers, keys, handkerchiefs. He spoke in silence, conversing with other bodies who also said, "You are not him, but he is out of my reach, and my sorrow is a kin to yours." Bodies did not need words to speak. Some other times they spoke of yearning so wrapped up in shame it was all sharp edges, roses all of thorns.

Cowley was too protean a being to find his same community there. He came to it with those who would not be defined by what they were told to be. Those who rebelled against the walls set round them with no better reason than the shape of them. They were louder, these, children of words, new words for the old type of beings they were. But he could appreciate the silent languages. Silence preceded words, for things that were too new or fragile to bear the weight of speech.

They had both spoken in silence before all words, before all worlds. The first tongue of angels was no small thing of airborne sound. Nor are the languages of stars able to be bound by lips and tongue and teeth. 

There is a past between them, six thousand years of words with meanings to small for what they meant. "I don't think you can do wrong." "Let me tempt you." "I'll do that one. My treat." "Oh good lord." "I'll give you a lift." "You go too fast." "Our own side." "To the world." There might now be words that were big enough, but neither can undo millenia of learning they could not speak so very quickly. All the words they had swallowed are stuck in their throats, blocking all the new ones. (So many were the same.)

So the world doesn't end, and they go on, if not quite as before, not so very differently. Now forever in each other's company, they eat and drink and talk endlessly, and never say what they mean. Summer passes into autumn, autumn fades to winter, the unspoken words drift higher than snow-covered leaves by Christmas Eve. 

When they leave their friends that night it seems all sounds leave them too. The Bentley ghosts home on silent wheels, the door to the shop makes no sound. Aziraphale stops inside, does not head to the back where they are wont to sit and talk. He goes instead to the stairs above. He stops before them and holds out his hand. Crowley hesitates in the doorway, and there is fear on his shoulders. The angel smiles softly and holds out his other hand. His hands call out, a plea for trust written in open palms. It's hard to trust everything you've ever wanted. Crowley comes forward, and takes the hands in his own, palm to palm is holy palmer's kiss. The angel leads the demon by the hand, up the winding stairs.  
The room he leads them to is entirely enclosed and almost entirely bare. Four walls, no windows, the one door, one small bench against one side, and nothing else. Crowley hesitates again at the door. He had an idea what the angel was offering when they came up the stairs. it wasn't this. This is so much bigger than what he'd thought. His body speaks contradictions. He leans forward, his feet are rooted to the floor. His hands tighten, but his elbows stick to his sides. Aziraphale holds his gaze, waiting on him. He stands loosely, as though he could wait forever, wait a matching six thousand years. Crowley steps into the room, closes the door behind him with a foot, and waits.

Aziraphale lifts their joined hands, brings first one and then the other to his lips. The gesture is reverent, as if the thin hands wore a ring of office to make an oath upon. An oath it is, but to the being, not any role but he himself. He frees his hands then to slide them up, tracing arms, shoulders, neck, jaw. To tangle in the flame of hair and draw down the head, kiss the brow in benediction. Each movement said, 'You are valued, you are worthy,' and lips are harder to deny when they press to flesh rather than moving only air. Crowley shuddered under them and bowed his head further. 

With slow deliberation Aziraphale puts his hands on each piece of Crowley's clothing. Touching it, then holding still. 'May I?, Is this okay?' each touch asks, and waits for an answering movement of assent, a nod, a move to aid, mirroring each for his own clothes. Each movement is slow, this moment a thing to treasure. Fingers lightly touching flesh as it appears, tracing the lines of each other, promises written in skin. When they are both bare to the waist, Aziraphale's hands cease their movements and rest in the dip of Crowley's waist. He steps back, drawing the demon after him, till they stand in the center of the room.

When they had stood with Adam as something closer to themselves, it was in a place that did not exist, in a time outside of time. Bringing forth their wings in the world is an unmistakable beacon to anyone who has eyes to see. In doing so together, what once dared not speak would scream to Heaven and Hell, not just in the extreme of the moment and their allegiance to Earth, but allegiance to each other. In even offering, Aziraphale is declaring, finally and absolutely, that he will not abandon Crowley for the sake of Heaven's approval again. He had made a choice between them, and is ready to state it openly. Tears form in serpentine eyes as Crowley nods his agreement.

Their wings spill forth at the same moment, painting the room in light and shadow. Aziraphale a blaze of light, Crowley a living darkness that drinks him down, calls forth more of his light. Perhaps this is as far as it was meant to go, but their souls so close to the surface call to each other. If bodies cannot lie, souls cannot even conceive of it, and their souls have longed for each other too long. They have brushed past each other twice and been denied, they will not be held back now. 

More wings unfurl behind Aziraphale, and from his neck come more heads. The one like an eagle holds a shining light in his beak. The one like a bull has lines of stars like diamonds strung between his horns. The mane of the lion is the same glowing white curls of the more familiar man like head. All the heads gaze at Crowley, as do a thousand other eyes that open all across his form.

Crowley unfolds as well, first into the black and red Serpent of Eden, and then beyond and beyond. The red fades and his scales began to glow as well, all over with tiny fires. His form looks like a map of the night sky, the Milky Way against the dark of the walls. His wings multiply as well, new pairs growing along his length. They each gaze at the true face of the other for the first time in their long, long lives. 

They are in the room and they are not, too vast to be bound by its walls, too real to be seen by creation. Crowley twines around Aziraphale, his soul singing 'mine', but not in the way an object or a possession is mine, but as a hand or a heart. Aziraphale enfolds Crowley, and echoes the vibration of his soul, until they are matched utterly. The soundless word, before all words, for love.


End file.
